Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request

Complaints the CPS have received about private prosecutor misconduct between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2019

Request (emboldened and in italics) and Response appear below:

1. Please can the CPS advise how complaints it received in total about any private prosecutor misconduct between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2019?

This is with reference to the following CPS guidance:

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions

2. Between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2019, how many reports did the CPS receive of alleged misconduct by Post Office Ltd as a private prosecutor?

3. Does the CPS hold easily accessed, central, digital information on the sources of concerns about misconduct by Post Office Ltd as a private prosecutor?

In response to questions one to three, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold the information requested.

4. Has any government department ever asked the CPS to examine any private prosecution by Post Office Ltd?

5. Has the CPS ever taken over a private prosecution by the Post Office?

In relation to questions four and five, the CPS does not collect data that constitutes official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. Our response is based upon our collated manual records that may be subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

While this is not a complete list, as of 25 February 2020 our records indicate, there are five recorded cases of private prosecutions referred to the CPS where the Post Office was the Private Prosecutor. None of these cases were referred to the CPS by a government department. It should therefore be noted that out of these five recorded cases, the CPS took over and discontinued two private prosecutions by the Post Office.

Furthermore, please note that these figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the CPS.

Information Management Unit 020 3357 0788 IMU@cps.gov.uk